sticks of dynamite
by Bambieyes1234
Summary: AU Fire in the Hole. Genderswap. Sequel to Gunpowder. After shooting Tommy Bucks on the rooftop of a Miami hotel, Rayla Givens finds herself back in Harlan, Kentucky twenty years after her abrupt departure.


**This was written with and for Pprfaith. If there is another sequel, the blame of that will probably land at her lovely feet as well. ****To fit better with this tone, Gunpowder has been heavily re-written and is much better off for it. **

* * *

After the coconut plantation, Rayla knows she isn't quite right.

It could very well be the cracked ribs and battered skull then being tied up securely as some poor guy had his mouth pried open wide enough to fit a stick of dynamite. She remembers how much the guy had been screaming, raw and muffled, when they taped his mouth shut. It was an ugly, ugly way to die - all blood, and charred brains, and fragments of bone . . .

On the side of an awful thing like that, there were only two things Rayla was sure about.

The first was that shitkicker scum like Tommy Bucks needed to be shot as many times as it takes to put them in the ground, second was that twenty years she's been out, and it always comes back down to fucking _Harlan_.

Of course, Harlan ain't anything to do with her until after Tommy Bucks stops twitching, after Dan rips her a new one and wonders what the hell she was thinking over and over again.

Rayla was thinking about blackened pieces of bone and explosions of blood, about how this was as close to sympathy as the scale-faced bastard was ever gonna get.

So when Dan snarls at her, Rayla explains to him that Bucks pulled first. She tells the inquiring board members what happened straight instead of pulling the hysterical woman card to cover her ass, and it's not twenty minutes later, in the parking lot, when Harlan comes into it.

"No, Dan, I grew up in Kentucky," Rayla bits out. She can feel the blood draining from her face, the horrified anger snaking through her insides as her lungs contract _hard_ in protest. "I don't wanna go back there."

Dan Grant grimaces, anger hot in his eyes as he jerks the car door open. "Well, then we've got a problem because you don't wanna go back to Kentucky and you cannot under any circumstances stay here." Her boss looks at her across the car roof, emphasis clear. "You got any other skills?" Without another word, Dan climbs into the car, and Rayla feels rage writhe across her jaw, tight as a wrench.

For a moment, the situation floods over her, and any other day she'd bring her temper to heel but shit, this was Kentucky with its backwards bullshit and damnit, _Boyd_. Rayla doesn't want to know what happened to him after she left, if he died in the mines with coal-black lungs or became just like his daddy, just like _her_ daddy . . .

She can avoid Arlo, has been able to since she was a kid, but not Boyd or Helen or the girl she'd left back in the Kentucky dust.

Rayla grabs those thoughts viciously and slams them down into the back of her head, buries them deep before they get the better of her, and she gets in the car before she can keep thinking about sinking back into Arlo's world, trapped and boxed in like an ambush, all over again.

**X-X-X-X-X**

(Tommy Bucks, grinning, turns his head to watch her as that man screams, high and wild and fucking _animal_ with terror, when his eyes land on the dynamite.

Tommy Bucks, smelling of expensive cologne and bourbon and sick, _sick_ excitement, crowding closer to whisper in her ear, stubble catching intimately against her hair before he backs off at her snarl, lifting his arms, proclaiming to his boys, "Let's leave this one, shall we?"

So cocky, so sure that nobody, no woman, could touch him.

The grim justice tastes like blood down her throat as she watches Tommy Bucks disintegrate before her eyes, smug arrogance bleeding into agitation, pale eyes darting round as his hand touches metal under the table, sweating as she counts the second from across the table, and the fuse gets closer and closer to his face.

Rayla knows that's important, the irony of Bucks seeing the clock ticking down and death advancing forward.

It's cleaner than a lit stick of dynamite that was such a contrast to burning down that field in her youth, Boyd's manic shout of _f__ire in the hole!_ roaring through her ears.)

**X-X-X-X-X**

Standing in the Kentucky airport makes her skin crawl right across her bones, and Rayla can't stop herself from looking around like a hunted animal, just waiting for some kinda trap to be sprung. She hates this feeling, the raw anger coursing through her veins and burning like lava, and all the memories it brings.

She managed to wait out the first seventeen years of her life in this place, and thinking about the explosion of blood on her face puts a few months in Harlan into perspective. She ain't a kid anymore, and no matter how tight her skin feels, patience does come with age. It just takes a bit to kick in.

Rayla walks through the airport briskly, just wanting somewhere with four walls and a well-stocked bar because despite what people assume, she's a mellow drunk. Right now, her temper is too hard to be trusted without something to numb the knowledge she was less than an hour away from Harlan.

Some big guy is wearing a grey shirt with _Kentucky_ blazed across it in bright blue, and she lowers the brim of her hat to cut off that reminder because really, it's never taken her long to grab a gun, and she's been handling firearms since she was a little thing, so the likelihood of her missing is slim.

Dan always told her it was a damn good thing she hadn't followed in her daddy's footsteps, and Rayla's never faltered in her agreement, no damn town is gonna shake her up enough to think different. She got out of Harlan once, she can do it again.

Rayla checks herself into a motel not far from the Lexington courthouse, and then, for the first time since Glynco six years back, she goes to see Art Mullen. From what she remembers about him, he's a good man, not the type of man she minds working with, and that ain't exactly regular.

He greets her warmly, shaking her hand like he would with anybody he respects, no gentle clasping of hands here, and Rayla recalls the motions of this, the twists and turns of his personality; all exasperation, even with the rookies, but so rarely anger. She wonders, as she quips about her fairly new boots and old hat, what the hell Art did to get assigned here.

"I heard about you and Peter," Art tells her when they're in his office, safely away from prying ears.

"Did you now?" Rayla returns, tight-lipped about her Texas fling that spanned a year or two longer than expected.

"Yeah, your Marshal warned me about it, said it was a messy break."

"You could say that," she replies carefully, thinking _shit, if you think that story's bad, I've got 'nother one a damn sight worse_.

But Rayla tries not to think about Boyd Crowder, to let her mouth run away from her until she asks and then she knows what happened to him, the budding criminal she'd convinced to help her study and who bit her so damn _deep_ in the dark bed of his truck that her skin could've been used for dental ID. And if that hadn't worked, well, there had been a few finger shaped bruises on her flesh, a bold _mine_ marked in bursts of color, and she ain't just thinking about her own skin.

(It's just regret that makes her think of him like that, barely older than her at eighteen, mind burning like a wildfire behind his eyes - Boyd is a bunch of old memories in her mind, always too smart and always too unnerving, just always too _something_ for this place; he's a million dead possibilities, no more to her, not _now_.)

"You don't waste words much, do ya, Rayla?" Art remarks dryly, blissfully oblivious.

"Talking tends t' get me in trouble," she says easily, curves her mouth like it's a joke, and it is, but it sure as hell ain't a funny one.

Art raises an eyebrow right back. "I heard a different story."

Rayla cants her head to the side, studies him. "You worried 'bout me being here, Art?"

"I haven't decided yet," he said, observing her with amused eyes that say she's got nothing to worry about. "Tell me about the shooting?"

"Dan didn't tell you about it while you two were gossipin'?" she asks, because in the heart of things, she's got better things to be angry about, but she can't just let it slip by uncommented upon.

"Oh, he did, but I wanna hear it from you."

Rayla looks at Art as he picks up a file, something a mite apologetic in his grimace. He looks worn down by something, probably the file in his hands, and she's never been half as familiar to mercy as anger (and this place just reminds her of that ugly fact) but she makes an effort to let her ire bleed out, if only outta spite.

"It was justified; he pulled first."

Art's gaze flickers up dryly, lingering on her face, but Rayla stares back frankly, just daring him to push, and it's an easy thing to do, an intimidating thing, but she ain't trying because she's always liked him, and he doesn't push because he's smart enough to step back sometimes. "Your father still live down in Harlan, Rayla?"

"Far as I know."

"I thought you were from there," he nods as he speaks, shifts the file around in his arms, and Rayla waits for him to continue. "Reason I asked was the US attorney's office is building a case against a guy from Harlan, and he's about the same age as you. It's a small town, so I figured you might know him, Boyd Crowder?"

The words hit her lungs before her brain, and her stomach sinks to the floor like a deadweight, a wave of something dark and hurting gushes up like a knicked artery in its place, but rage stops that cold, because that's always been so easy for her, anger scalding and sizzling in her blood, and a dawning cackle of bitter irony in her ears because Harlan hits her first, but of course, she should've been expecting Boyd to hit her the hardest.

Rayla swallows it down harshly, accepts the truth, works with it. It's Harlan, people go bad, and neither of them were ever deluded about the other.

"Well shit, Art," Rayla says finally. "There anything else you wanna drop on me?"

"You knew him, then." Art looks at her closely, his frown adding lines to his face, and Rayla flits her eyes from his face to her chest, then back again.

"Not a whole lot," she says and lets him draw his own conclusion.

**X-X-X-X-X**

Because Rayla Givens shoots faster than any man, thinks faster than most of them as well but it's a pretty face and full chest most people see first, and Art was with her at Glynco, watching all the recruits wondering about her right 'til she hit a target dead-centre from sixty paces without even adjusting her hat.

And Boyd, slow Kentucky drawl papering over the intelligence burning in his eyes, looks like a hillbilly ought.

(No one at all looks at him and thinks it might be deliberate anymore.)

**X-X-X-X-X**

At the bar, Art hands her a file, and Rayla reads about bank robberies and tax evasion and violent assault, but then she hears about the Nazi bullshit, and it ain't no more than bullshit, she knows, never doubts that.

(In Harlan, it's all about blood and guns and the hot metal of both in somebody's mouth, about tempers and vengeful feuds and Dickie Bennett's legs _wrenching_ hard to the side, but more than any of that, it boils down to kin, to how far the weight of that can sink a person, but there's a _choice_ too.)

This ain't about belief for Boyd; it's about power, it's about freedom in bundles of cash rather than miles, it's about being Bo Crowder's son like she's always ran from being Arlo Givens' daughter, and damnit, she wants to hit something, wants to hit _him_, ask him what the hell he's been doing for the past twenty years - what he's done to people and what he's done to himself because he had a _choice_, not an easy one, she knows from having walked that path, but still, a choice to be so much _more_ than this bullshit, than this _county_, if he'd _just_ -

**X-X-X-X-X**

- If he'd _just_ -

There are a million ways that ends, and not one of them Rayla can risk because she's _furious_, furious like it's always been so easy to be, furious like she's seventeen all over again, and there are a lot of minefields in being seventeen all over again.

**X-X-X-X-X**

Art tells her about the recent robberies, tells her about things out of a Steve McQueen movie, and he tells her other stuff, things she lets herself filter out for the most part because nobody's ever needed to tell her about Boyd Crowder before. Rayla quips and speculates back and never looks at the picture attached to the file. The ball rolls back and forth between them.

They talk about Glynco but the conversations drifts back to Boyd, drifts back to trapping Boyd, like that's gonna be any easy thing at all, and talking about Boyd like he's every suspect she's ever chased down, like he's a list of wrongs and never any rights, like it's that _simple, _and_ fuck_, it's Harlan, so of course, it ain't.

**X-X-X-X-X**

"How well did you know Crowder, really?" Art asks eventually, later into the night, because he ain't an idiot.

"Harlan's a small town, Art, and our daddies were into the same shit; we grew up round each other, that's all," Rayla says, focusing on letting the words spin slickly out of her mouth, on making Art believe the lies she's been trying to con herself into accepting for the past twenty years.

She slings back her shot of bourbon because Boyd Crowder's not been her business for all those years, and she doesn't get why the hell she's getting herself tangled up in this, into the past she broke from in a rest stop a few miles south from here.

**X-X-X-X-X**

In her dreams, Rayla is back in Miami, back across that table, but her clothes are splattered red, wet with darkening blood, and a fuse burns orange under the Florida sun. Tommy Bucks stares across at her, skin flushing red, eyes darting; _fear, fear, fear_ all over, but then it bleeds out, and it's hellfire green eyes, sharp white teeth bared in a grin, a black shock of hair blown about by the wind as the clock runs out, and Rayla's got her fast-pull, got her gun, and she _fires_ -

(Too late to stop - )

((She shouldn't want to - ))

**X-X-X-X-X**

Seventeen years old, Rayla knows she won't stay, not even for him, and when the offer comes up, she takes it, clutches it closes, runs fast as she can -

Calls from a pay phone, says goodbye, keeps running.

Becomes a Marshal, watches people fall under her bullets, blood blooms bright in the sun.

Fuse sparks, a man dies, and Rayla always _shoots_.

**X-X-X-X-X**

Rayla wakes before her alarm and breathes through the sudden weight on her lungs, and thinks about nothing at all until she needs to get up and back out into Lexington. After a shower, she pulls her jeans on, pairs them with a dark blouse with a few top buttons undone and a jacket, and her flat boots. Her holster comes on before her star, and she hauls her long hair up into a pony tail (keeps it away from her eyes, not being blind helps her aim) before putting on her hat.

She leaves, grabs breakfast and coffee on the way, and clocks in around seven.

Her cell vibrates before she's more than a foot past the courthouse, and Art tells her about a body on the bridge she knows.

"I'll be there," Rayla tells him, turns sharply on her heel, and starts to go back the way she came. Her blood starts to fizzle like a firework, all heat and build-up to something a whole lot worse. "Think it's Boyd's work?"

"Well, it sure as hell ain't the tooth fairy," Art replies dryly.

"Why?" Rayla asks, thinks about a million crime scenes over twenty years. "His teeth get blown all over the dash?"

Art sighs in her ear, a burst of tired noise. "Honestly, Rayla, I didn't feel like getting close enough to check."

**X-X-X-X-X**

From Virginia to Miami, people always talk to her after her job is done, and there's always soft eyes, there's always sympathy in weathered faces, there's always pats to the shoulder, there's always been _you did the right thing_ since the first day Rayla put a round right between some man's eyes, his knife hitting the floor before it touches her. But people start learning from her, learning there's no soldiering on behind her musing drawl, there's nothing aching about killing a man in her bones, and so she slips between states, a trail of dead more than ten miles long behind her, a holstered gun on her hip.

The shortest time she was stationed somewhere was in Salt Lake City.

The longest place she's ever stayed was Miami.

Between those two points, people start asking how many men she's killed, and Rayla has to wonder how people expect her to keep count.

**X-X-X-X-X**

Jared Hale, Art tells her on the bridge. His head's an explosion of blood, and oh, Rayla's made messier corpses, has turned people into no more than flesh and lead. Growing up with Arlo, she can't remember a time unknown to violence, seeing it on the streets and in the church and especially round the mines, and she ain't ever believed Boyd to be anything less than two-thirds psychotic and the rest just plain _vicious_.

So knowing that Boyd's killed somebody? Ain't exactly a shock nor a delight.

"Do you know what this is?" Art asks, lifting a green device gingerly, and Rayla makes a gruff sound to indicate _no, _so he continues, "It's the cap that goes on the end of a Rocket Launcher."

"No shit," Rayla says, fails in not going a little cold thinking about what Boyd could do with one of those things.

As it turns out, he could raze a church down to blackened ashes and sooty cinders, like something out of the bible, and she doubts he was blind to the irony of the whole thing. It's their next stop, a street filled with on-lookers and firemen, a geyser of water shooting out to combat the linger flames of a burned out wreck, far beyond saving.

Two people are waiting on them, a beautiful black woman with hard eyes in a suit and a man with slicked back blond hair, red tie stark against the white of his shirt. She looks more than once at him, finds something interesting in his arms and pale eyes.

"Tim Gutterson, Rachel Brooks," Art says, shooting her a glance on the first name, one she just smiles back at. "This is Rayla Givens."

They shake hands, all grip, no tenderness, just the way she likes. Tim Gutterson looks at her, looks at her long legs, and it's subtle enough to be a compliment, to let her know he likes what he sees too, but it's Rachel who looks her over with the eyes of a woman years into law enforcement and says, "It's nice to meet you."

Tim outlines the scene for them, tells them about the blind witnesses and reels off a confused testimony. When she quips, he plays along.

"The Pastor had it different; he heard the man say _fire in the hole_," Rachel says.

An echo of memory sounds in her ear, and Rayla's gaze flits over to Art, only to find his head already turned her way. His mouth tightens a bit, eyes full of suspicions, and there's something a little pointed in the way he plays along, "Sound familiar?"

Rayla nods, keeps her stare real steady on his, easy to mistake as a challenge.

Rachel and Tim's looks burn into the side of her, curiosity swimming thick in the air, but Art simply nods, directs Rachel over to Pastor Fandy, and colorfully explains some about the witness to her, including a side-note about dope-selling, and she's gotta smile as her blood burns hotter still, aggression rolls around inside her like a caged animal, because well, that certainly ain't a coincidence.

It's Rachel's voice that draws her attention away, arching in a way Rayla recognizes as personal. When Rayla looks over, the pastor's waving his hands around furiously, a burst of sunset-based colors, contrasting to Rachel's sharp suit, but the anger in them both matches.

"I thought I told her to be nice," Art mutters, moves forward to soothe the ruffled feathers, and Rayla, Tim dogging her steps, follows. She watches as Art's attempt to get the witness back on track fails, as Fandy's anger grows, and she figures he's a pretty laid-back guy, usually, so that's the way to approach. She breathes in, alters her posture a little, less of a ball-buster, more inviting; more Texas, less Harlan.

"Well, I saw Peter Tosh once," Rayla offers, cuts through the build-up to Art's second attempt, and the pastor turns, scowl in place, to look at her.

"You think just because I'm black and have a Jamaican accent, I like reggae?" he says sharply.

Rayla slips by Tim's curiosity and Art's concern and Rachel's frown, cants her head a little to the side, smiles at him low, a little flirty. "I think we all have to deal with certain prejudices. Me, people see a white woman in her thirties, having a career instead of a family, and think that there must be something wrong with me. We just have to deal with that."

Pastor Fandy hesitates, looks her over, a little more interested because she's right, because she's tall and curvy with a gun on her hip instead of kids. "Is it true?"

"What? That there's something wrong with me?" Rayla's eyebrow arches, a smirk toys at her mouth, and Art sighs. "You'd have to buy me a whole damn lot of drinks to find that out, but I'm open, if you really wanna go down that road."

"Your partner over there was just accusing me of being a drug dealer."

"Yeah, well, believe me when I say a drug dealer would actually be a step up from some of what I dated in high school."

Rayla looks back at him, slyness all in her smile, and watches as reluctant amusement slips slowly across Pastor Fandy's face. "Okay," he says. "Alright. What do you want to know?"

******X-X-X-X-X**

"Flirting with a witness?" Art questions in his office, disapproval thick in his voice. The door is closed, Art's in his chair, and Rayla sits, balances her hat on her knee.

"Hey, I got you a witness to pick Boyd out of a line-up, didn't I?" Rayla retorts flippantly, tilts her head, like she's studying him, but she isn't; she knows what's bothering him, and instinct tells her to play coy, to let him come out and ask, but Art's a friend, one capable of taking her off the case if he wonders too hard. "What do you really wanna ask me, Art?"

Art hesitates, looks at her for a moment longer, and sighs like a tired old man. "I don't wanna ask you shit, Rayla, but this is a big case, if whatever the hell's gone on between you and Crowder - "

"Nothing went on with us," she lies easily. "No more than what already I told you, and even if it had, Art, I really strike you as the sentimental _type_?"

"Oh, I know you're a cold bitch," Art says with certainty, almost fond. "It's proving _that_ in court which might be the problem."

"Judging by the shit I've caught over the years, my file should do just fine," Rayla says sarcastically. "I knew Boyd when I was kid. We got dumped together when our daddies weren't at each other's throats, that was about it. There's no conflict of interest here, Art."

"You sure 'bout that?" Art asks skeptically, arches an eyebrow.

"Yeah," Rayla echos (_lies, lies, lies_), "I'm sure."

Art looks at her, just long enough to tell her any belief is by his own choice. "Even if you did know him better, he's not that kid anymore."

(When she was a girl, they ran together through Harlan, but she's always watched him a little, tried to keep him from burning up too fast, taking somebody down with him, and - _the pitch fills with roars, arms lock under hers, hauling her back from Dickie Bennett _- and she's shot so many, and Boyd's probably shot less, and it's all blood, it's all bullets, and Art's so very wrong.)

**************X-X-X-X-X**

Later Tim tells her that just hours after her flight landed in Kentucky, tiny golden-haired Ava shot and killed Bowman Crowder at the dinner table. It surprises Rayla more that she married a Crowder because Ava might have been sweet as pie, but she's still a Harlan girl.

It rankles furiously to hear Bowman's been beating on the girl though, because Rayla still remembers bloody knees only a kiss could fix and Mary's baby sister's arms curling tight round her neck, but it makes the shot justified, and that counts for a lot in the future.

Seems to count now cause Art barely blinks when she goes to Ava by herself. On the drive over (_back_), Rayla passes a _Jesus Saves_ carving and tastes irony in her mouth, strong like blood, because if God exists, he sure as hell doesn't swing by Kentucky, by any state she's worked in, much at all.

(Harlan's underbelly never changes: but the buildings ain't the same, and the realisation jarrs.)

"Oh my God," Ava says, just a moment after Rayla knocks. The screen door distorts her view, but Ava stutters to a stop, thinner and taller than Rayla expects, still blonde and pretty though, Kentucky thick in her voice. "Rayla Givens."

Rayla lifts her head a tad, oddly struck by the sight of her now, so fragile looking. It makes her angry at a deadman, but a whole lot tender too, real protective of this woman. It's more than a throw back to old times, because Ava ain't that girl anymore, and she's already proven she can kill a man, but Rayla wants to make sure she never has to again. "Hey Ava."

Without a word, Ava moves forward, pulls the screen door back, plunges herself forward into Rayla's arms,

Rayla stops herself from pulling back like her training demands, because Ava's barely an inch shorter than her, but she just sinks into her form, trembling like a frightened dear, and Rayla hugs her, lets Ava cling tight as she wants, hushes her gentle. Ava's arms coil tighter, face burrowing deeper into her neck, breath hitching wetly against her skin.

"I _killed_ him," Ava tells her, a little keening ache in her voice.

"I know." Rayla presses her face into honey-scented blonde hair, because she's seen this, the vicious come down after being afraid for so long, after killing a man for the first time. Ava exhales shakily, but she doesn't cry, does nothing but hold on and breathe in deep, until slowly - _slowly_ - her grips slackens.

"Oh dear Lord," Ava murmurs, shaking still. "I'm such a mess." She laughs, embarrassed. "_Cryin'_ on you like this, I'm sorry - "

"You ain't got nothing to apologize for," Rayla assures her, and Ava lingers a little longer, face hot against her skin, before she inhales abruptly and pulls back. So close, Ava is pale, excepting a flush on her cheeks, and her eyes are red, surrounded by shadows, but she braves a smile.

"Come in," Ava invites, her jittery emotions bleeding into her voice, and she pushes the screen door open as Rayla nods, takes off her hat politely, follows Ava inside. The blonde woman makes for the kitchen, arms lifting to touch her face where Rayla can't see, the sides of her too large flannel shirt parting. "Would you like a drink?"

"I'd love one," Rayla answers, turns her head when she catches a flash of red in her vision, sees a huge puddle of dry blood on Ava's sitting room floor, marking the spot where Bowman bled out.

She follows Ava into the kitchen, listens to her talk, hears her ramble about her husband beating her with a belt, and Rayla ain't so cold, so far from having to take a hard hit across the face to feel anything less than all that on her heart.

"I hit my head on the stove," Ava murmurs, eyes too pale and too wide for Rayla's peace of mind. There's something fevered in her face, something not a million miles from madness, so unlike Frances Givens' meek acceptance. "I got off that floor knowing he was never gonna hit me again."

The circumstances are ugly, but there's something a little beautiful in that.

******************************X-X-X-X-X**

("Everybody knew," Ava tells her a few lines later. "Nobody ever did anything."

_Nobody ever does_, Rayla could tell her, still feel the words deep in her bones, twenty years since.

Doesn't.

Ava already knows.)

******************************X-X-X-X-X**

"And Rayla?" Ava says a little later, still fussing with her blonde hair, peers through the sitting room from the second doorway. Her words a little more coherent, but there's still something a little off, and Rayla's suspecting a concussion. "Soon as I saw you, I knew everythin' was gonna be alright."

Rayla grimaces faintly, knows she can't do that _yet_, not in a more personal way, because the trouble that could cause'll give Art a heart attack. She can keep her safe, but she can't hug things better no more. She hears Ava walking up the stairs to shower before she can say so.

Not a moment later, the back door swings in, and Rayla steps smoothly out into the hall. Pure luck, it ain't anybody she recognizes, some guy with short spiky hair, black tattoos on his chest, who startles when he sees her.

"Who in the hell are you?" he throws out before getting a good look at her. "You one of Ava's friends?"

"Something like that," Rayla says simply, puts her hat back on, looks back at him. Thinks about his tattoo, feels willing to bet he's one of Boyd's men, and she feels fury swelling in the pit of her gut, burning hot up her spine, sinking into her bones. Her job stops her playin' nurse to the woman, but she can keep the surviving Crowders the hell away from her. "That's an interestin' necklace; you buy it or poach it yourself?"

His back went all up, like he's trying to seem tough, to impress. "Shot her myself, yanked the teeth right out and ate 'er tail."

She knows a lie when she hears one; so many crooks over the years, lying to her, flirting with her, trying to get her to ease up, to let them slip on by. Never works. Most that tried weren't too fast with a gun either. "That put you in Florida the last decade?"

"Yeah, up the everglades." Looks her over 'gain. "Ain't ever seen you 'round, what's your name?"

"Rayla Givens," she tells him. Sets her glass aside, flashes her badge, and _savours_ the stiffening of his spine; not fear, not for a woman, not yet, but it always comes.

And the rest is easy, easy to smile all nice, to tell him about carting his kin off to Stark, to watch the dim thoughts dancing round in his eyes, like he still ain't believing this, but then she asks what his business here is, and he calls for Ava, tries to head on upstairs, and Rayla shoves him back _hard_, watches him rock back on his heels, stumbling for his balance. There's anger in his eyes, and she feels an outburst coming, anticipates it.

"I don't know where the hell you were raised, boy, but you don't barge 'nto somebodies home uninvited. You go back out, knock first." Shows him how, obvious and condescending. "Ava wants t' let you in, so be it. She don't, you best be on your way."

Dewey scoffs, head rearing back, sneer twisting his mouth up all pathetic. "I ain't gotta listen to you." He cuts his eyes over her, and rage sings through her, arching up _high_, aggression running hot. "_Woman_."

He tries for another step, and Rayla's arm snaps out, thumping into the wall, blocking his way to the stairs, and briefly, he flinches, timid all under that ego, but his pride flares up dumb, and she expects what happens next. Dewey tries to turn that recoil into something else; he flings his fist at her face, a wild attempt at a proper hit, and Rayla catches it easy, grasps it _hard_, hears him yelp as she uses it to haul him closer, draws her own fist back and -

Dewey's yelp turns into a shout of pain, his nose crunches under her knuckles, blood spilling fast over her skin. Still gripping his hand, she twists him and his arm round viciously, draws out his shout into something closer to a scream, and slams him face-first into the wall, forceful enough to make a picture at the top of the stairs quiver.

Blood-rage coarsing violently through her, Rayla thinks about bouncing his head off the wall a time or two more but a sense of manners stops her. Ava's got a concussion, she's sensitive to loud noises, like an ambulance.

Instead Rayla clamps a hand down on the back of his neck, tight enough to make all those nerves under his skin worryingly numb, threads an arm through the back of his, exerting enough pressure to hurt, and hauls him off the wall.

"Lemme go!" he moans.

"Walk," she bites out harshly, tightens her grip. Dewey stumbles blindly at first, but she keeps pushing him toward the door, just fast enough to make him struggle to keep up. When she gets him outside, she starts talking, keeps her voice polite, conversational, "You're one of Boyd's, ain't you?"

Dewey spits out a wad of blood that she side-steps neatly. "Ain't any of your business!"

Rayla exhales harshly, feels a shiver more of hot rage. Boyd's made himself her business, made himself even more impossible to ignore, and that's just fact, ain't no use wishing it different. "You know I went to high school with Boyd?" she says half across the yard. "Used to see him all the time, so I'm gonna need you t' tell him something from me."

She pauses to slam him into the side of the car, wrenches the door open, shoves him inside. Releasing his wrist, Rayla notices the scatter gun in the backseat a second before Dewey Crowe twists, and her hand flies out, snags his collar, yanks him forward. With a _thunk, _his cheekbone smashes into the steering wheel. With her other hand, she hauls the driver's seat forward, and the car horn wails. She hears him cursing as she reaches into the back to grab the weapon.

Sighing, Rayla straightens up, moves Dewey's seat back into place, and he slumps back, a fresh cut on his cheek.

"The hell is wrong with you?" he screams, hands shooting up to clutch his bloody nose.

"Hope you weren't plannin' on usin' this on me," Rayla remarks conversationally, checks the scatter gun, but it's empty. She lowers her gaze to look at Dewey Crowe. Anger is hot and fierce and urgent, a bundle of impatience screaming _nownownow_, and what she feels now ain't that. It's cold and calm, like inhaling a lungful of air on a snowy day, almost feeling the ice cooling your brain off - certainly feels it reach her face.

"There's something you should probably think about before tryin' to pull a gun on me again. If you make me pull my sidearm, I'm gonna shoot to kill. That's a gun's purpose, so that's how I use it, and you ain't gonna be an exception to that, y' hear me?"

Dewey stays silent, all wide eyes and stunned horror. Ain't any woman who hits hard as she does. She pauses, still half-leaning down, his gun in one hand. Boyd was gonna hear about this, about her being back in town, and that's gonna be brutal.

Nobody likes to be left, especially the way she did it, and they're on different sides now. If she can't find him first, eventually he'll come after her, and it's like one of their games, like cops and robbers, only there's a higher chance somebody's gonna catch a bullet.

"Next time you see Boyd," Rayla says lightly, "Tell him not to bother comin' after me, I'll find him first."

******************************X-X-X-X-X**

Any person with enough blood on their hands can get away with murdering a nobody in Harlan, but there are only three names that can get away with murdering somebody: Crowder, Bennett, Limehouse.

Used to be Givens.

It's all about fear and reputation and history stretching all the way back to the Civil War.

("_Everyone knew_," Ava had told her, "_Nobody ever did anything_.")

******************************X-X-X-X-X**

When Rayla steps back into the house, Ava's walking down the stairs, toweling her wet hair, worry pinching her mouth like an old woman. It relaxes when she sets eyes on Rayla. There's the scent of honey in the air, sweet and feminine.

"What was that I heard outside?" Ava asks when her foot hits the bottom step.

"Just had to run one of Boyd's men off," Rayla explains briefly, keeps her wrist twisted a little, hiding the blood on her knuckles from the girl.

"You do that for me?" Ava smiles warmly, eyes all starry yet knowing, still. "He after you?" she wonders. "Or me?" Now she laughs faintly, a dizzy little sound. "Want me t' help you catch 'im? Do you even _wanna_ catch him?"

Ava and Mary lived just down the street from her, must've seen her with Boyd when they were little more than babies, but the implication that she'd let anything get in the way of her job rankles her a little. No one in Harlan's able to afford sentiment, and that's the only part of this place she's kept.

"I'd appreciate your help," Rayla says, looks her in the eye, "In catchin' Boyd before he hurts anybody else. Right now, I just need to talk to him about something we suspect he might've been involved in, but he's not an easy man to find. I was wondering if there was anything in Bowman's stuff that could help us with that."

Ava smiles at her, a little vacantly. "I got an address, let me go get that for you."

Not entirely trusting the girl to stay on her feet, Rayla follows her to the sitting room, just close enough to catch if Ava falls. The younger woman picks up a notepad, flicks through it fast.

"While you're there, you got anybody I can call to come take care of you?"

"Why would I need anybody t' take care of me?" Ava asks, lifting her head sluggishly.

"Well, you said you hit your head pretty hard. I don't think it would be best for you to be alone right now. What about Mary?"

"Mary ain't in Harlan anymore," Ava dismisses. Her voice rises a little, "And Bowman always kept me away from people, never liked me being friendly with anybody, _especially_ other guys. Always sayin' how I was plannin' on leaving him, and I _was_ - oh, here it is."

And then Rayla has a lead in her hands, a scrap of paper that should put her on Boyd's tail, that should put them together for the first time in twenty years, and it fucks up her head a little. Can't leave Ava alone, something she can fix.

But there's only one person in the whole of Kentucky she trusts with Ava now.

******************************X-X-X-X-X**

Rayla calls Aunt Helen: who else?

******************************X-X-X-X-X**

The drive feels like a long one, though it takes less than fifteen minutes before she pulls up outside a battered church. Rayla checks her firearm first thing, doubts Boyd would be dumb enough to take a shot at her, but she couldn't place that certainty on his Nazi thugs. Holstering her weapon, she glances out the window shield, sees a few cars lurking around the back, but nobody was outside.

She taps the solid butt of her gun one last time. Far as things went, Rayla's always been one to act, not feel. It's what makes her so good at her job, what pushed her so far in law enforcement when her gender did her no favors, but she feels aggravation coiling tight in her ribcage before she shoves it harshly aside.

Lets that cold calm roll through her, the steadiness that precedes every one of her shots, and Rayla climbs out of her car, closes the door, sets forward toward the church. The doors burst right open, deliberately attention-catching, and when Boyd Crowder fills her vision for the first time in twenty years, she stops cold.

His hair is thinner on the top, eyes still burning like hellfire, and his grin is mean enough to match it, something bloody and explosive like bottled hurting rage lurks behind it. He's still tall, still lean, older than the eighteen years she remembers, but still _Boyd_. Her stomach flips, and _oh_, it's pain, it's happiness, it's sharp and bright and all hers, but it's not something she can keep.

(Boyd's always been coldly pragmatic, Rayla's always been quick with a gun, only fools let their feelings run.)

"Rayla Givens," Boyd drawls from the top of the steps, flinging her name out like a throwing knife on a destination to pin her still. He looks at her the same way, electrical with intensity, a history in his eyes that comes only from daring to trust somebody in a dangerous town filled with sweetly-smiling monsters. He moves suddenly, stalks down the steps fast, opening his arms wider with a rough, "C'mere, girl."

Rayla meets him the rest of the way. When he hugs her, he feels solid against her, close and familiar enough to cut deep, but Rayla kicks dust over that, squeezes tight once, fills her lungs with gunpowder and spice. She draws back first, and Boyd looks at her from real close, eyes moving all over her, not hiding it well enough.

"It's been twenty years since I've seen your face," he remarks, a certain twist to his mouth. There's faint mockery in his voice, layering thick over something else, and since she can't see anybody else, she figures the show's just for her. "You look real good, like the law. I like the hat, where did you get that, Miami?"

That's a challenge, an indication of how things are gonna be, and that's fine with her. If Boyd's got the cunning of a fox, she's got the patience of a steel trap.

Rayla smirks back sardonically, keeps her face coy. "Well, ain't that something? I got it someplace just outside Kentucky."

Boyd's grin widens, poison politeness slick on him. "Now, that _is_ somethin'. I'm surprised you kept anythin' from our home, Rayla."

(_Our home_. It feels like a scolding and a brand and a reminder, like teeth biting down on her in the dark until she bruises in the shape of his mouth.)

It dances through her head to be especially cruel but this game is known to them, tip-toeing around each other, needling the other carefully, pushing them closer and closer to the edge until one of them says something too true to be forgiven easy. Today, it won't be her who slips.

So she keeps smiling without any teeth, energy simmering in the back of her head, and says noncommittally, "Always liked Westerns, Boyd."

"Yes, I remember," Boyd tells her, meeting her eyes, and there's nothing casual in his statement at all.

******************************X-X-X-X-X**

In the Church, they drink moonshine and talk about their daddies, words careful, guarded nicely, and Rayla feels her mind ticking along with his, remembering how he thinks, how many meanings he layers into his words, how his eyes just burn and his word drawl out unhurried. Lies ain't the way to go with Boyd, and impatience just made him slower, trickier to herd along to a point.

Rayla feels him trying to bait her with Arlo, to draw her out, but she's keeps polite, knows indifference crawls under his skin faster than anger ever could. She talks with him, enquires about his daddy right back, and waits him out.

(When she was sixteen, he climbed into her bedroom and kissed her hard.)

Boyd settles into a pew, she takes the one in front of him, sits far enough along to see him properly, and he begins to talk. It's nothing she wants to hear from him, nothing she can stand to hear from him, and anger rolls through her _hot_, fills her up until she feels ready to burst open with it, but she tries to hold it back, to _control_ herself and win.

"I had a couple of drinks with a guy recently - Pastor Fandy, actually, the one who's church you blew up?" Rayla tells him evenly, watches Boyd become unnervingly still as he listens to her. "And I gotta tell you, Boyd, he didn't strike me as particularly soulless."

There's a shift in his eyes, a darkening that reminds her for all the world of a worsening storm, and Boyd leans forward to touch her arm, pressing close to the pew, his hand branding hot through her sleeve. "That's where you're wrong, Rayla." He's close enough for her to see all the lies in his eyes. "I recruit skins who know no more than you, and I have to teach them - "

"Bullshit," Rayla cuts him off cold, and this is a counter-attack; not all she can handle seeing.

Boyd's bared teeth flicker, illusion of a smile faltering so briefly, when he realises she won't play any further. "Excuse me?" he draws, all false surprise and quiet _real_ danger.

Rayla shakes her head faintly, almost wants to _smile_, because she remembers him when they were children, all intense eyes and low murmurs, spinning words like gold, crawling up inside somebodies head and twisting things to suit his purposes, because Boyd's always been about that, about manipulation and beating people into the dust many ways as he can.

Race ain't no more than a new trick.

"I know you ain't half as crazy as you let people think or stupid enough to believe any of this shit," she states frankly, like it's nothing at all; like it's always been nothing at all. To bite, there's Harlan in her voice, polishing up her words all familiar, bait much as truth.

******************************X-X-X-X-X**

(If there ain't anybody else in the church, who are they acting for?)

******************************X-X-X-X-X**

"And what do you know about me, Rayla?" Boyd asks, head ducking low, and oh, his voice is soft, low and soft and yes, _edgy_. "After bein' so far from home for so long?"

Words all dressed up as a taunt calling her closer, thick skin over a raw nerve.

"Some things don't wash out easy," Rayla shrugs off, thinks, _blood_, remembers, _coal-dust, all over your skin_.

"Now, that ain't quite true, is it?"

It always struck her as a girl how low-key his anger was, but it really ain't subtle now. When Boyd gets angry, she feels it across the back of her neck, and it's there now, sharp under her skin, thickening the air between them, and her muscles tighten further, and that's fury, locking her up, looking at what she's seeing and _seething_.

"I know about your friend Devil, his file was quite a read, over a dozen counts of drug possession - and it struck me that, well, your daddy's doing time for selling . . . meth, weren't it?" Rayla muses (_deflects_), voice rolling out whimsical. "Then my boss told me somethin' interesting about Pastor Fandy's church, that it was a dope store before it was blown to all hell."

"Oh, now, there's a big difference between meth and dope, Rayla," Boyd drawls out, dropping her name hard, looking at her all direct, all intent, and it ain't new, ain't anything but _him_, all of him tryin' to rock her back on her heels, but it only makes her wanna plant her feet down harder and hold firm in place.

(and maybe he _knows_ that, used to, when they were so young.)

"Same market," Rayla states flat-out, watches him from under her hat, and Boyd tips his head back, exhaling like he's laughing bitter on the inside. She keeps on, pushing at him, waits for a fall. "Course you already know that."

"Much as you do," Boyd tosses right back, and she denies none of it, just gazes back over the pew at him, nothing in her face. That cruel, angry thing slivers through his eyes. "Much as any person in Harlan county does, Rayla. You been gone long enough to forget how things are here?"

"Not enough," Rayla says, all the force and direction of a bullet, and she so rarely misses.

Boyd's so close, close enough she can feel the heat in his arm, beside hers, and she sees his hard smile sharpen like a wild cat's claws, swinging in for the final strike, and he talks about her daddy again, mentions Tommy Bucks, like it's anything but good that man ain't breathin' anymore, like that shot was anything but _deserved_ after -

Rayla catches herself, recovers, loosens the wire-tight clench of her jaw; retreats; "Reason I'm here . . . "

**X-X-X-X-X**

"Hey, Rayla?" Boyd calls, and she half turns in response. "Let me ask you something; would you shoot me?" Opens his arms, like he's making it easy for her.

Rayla looks at him straight, feels her hair brushing between her shoulder blades, says real simple, "What do you think?"

It ain't enough of a promise to hold much weight but it's still a warning, a real one because if he gives her no choice, she'll pull the trigger and doubts she'll regret it.

Never has before.

**X-X-X-X-X**

The next morning, Rayla brings Pastor Fandy a cup of coffee, hands it to him, settles down beside him. He's anxious, she can tell; jittery. They're outside the line-up room.

"It ain't bourbon," she states wryly, tries to put him at ease. "But 'til this case's over, I can't go drinking with our star witness."

Pastor Fandy snorts, but looks over at her, considering. "What about after?"

Her hair's loose today, tumbling down her shoulders in copper-brown tangles, and Rayla arches an eyebrow, amused. "After a certain amount of time, my choice's are my own." The door opens beside them, and he startles faintly. "You ready t' go in?"

Fandy nods like he don't believe it.

******X-X-X-X-X**

After that, things should've flowed smooth and landed Boyd in jail for years longer than it takes her to get transferred out of Kentucky but Pastor Fandy teeters on the last step, and everything crashes down. Don't take a genius to guess setting the line-up so late was a mistake.

Boyd walks free, and Rayla walks with him right to the door, before he leaves, he turns back to her and -

Well.

He gives her twenty-four hours to get out of Harlan, and adrenaline rockets up her spine, interest blooms black in her mind, because there was never anything sweet about them together, just two angry kids holding onto each other so tight it bleeds into something more than that, a something that can only be formed in a godforsaken town, and it holds hard enough to flare up now, to not _wanna_ shoot him.

(Life ain't about doing what pleases her.)

Boyd stands in front of her, head ducked low, eyes burning serious, burning vengeful, and Rayla knows there ain't anything she can do to stop this from happening - maybe there was once, standing in that truck stop just south of here, seventeen with desperation clawing under her skin to _get_ _out_, but not now.

Not thirty-seven, standing across from Boyd Crowder, gun on one hip, gold star on the other, boots stuck back in Kentucky soil, blood simmering all hot all the time.

Rayla inclines her head, no words in her mouth other than, "Now we're talkin'."

Boyd looks at her with sharp, sharp eyes, before he backs up, turns at the door, walks away.

**X-X-X-X-X**

Ava catches her on the stairs, introduces her to a skinny blonde lady called Winona Hawkins; later, on the roof, invites her to dinner.

"You're a big girl, Rayla," she says, stabs her cigarette out, smiles. "You wanna come, ain't anythin' gonna stop you."

Rayla says nothing at all.

**X-X-X-X-X**

Kentucky gets hot when it goes dark, air turns thick and tight, tangible on her skin. Rayla sheds her blouse, slips back into a black tank top, sweat slick on her skin, but she keeps her boots on, lets her hair tumble down over her bust, strands brushing her face as she smirks and doesn't and loses poker to Rachel Brooks.

It ain't been more than seven hours when the phone rings, and Ava talks in her ear, words walking between tight and airy, and Rayla thinks how fast Boyd could flip from patience to impatience, how big the ensuring explosion was.

The chaos had been theirs once, words and blood on her knuckles, bursts of fire and smoke, but she still doesn't expect Art and the others to be diverted by a hail of bullets; her car door flies open, she leans forward, gun in hand, firing an instant later at a white man's head, an easy target in the night.

Her cell rings as one man goes down, the other shouts, and, "You got _this_?" she repeats flatly as light flares with another storm of lead, none of it aiming for her. Art orders her to go on ahead, and this time, she listens, pretends she can't see the second car tailing her, 'til she reaches the curving turn to Ava's house. Ditches her car, ducks in the edge of the woods, waits.

When the car stops, she sneaks up on it, braces her hand on the door, leans down to look in on them. "I know you," she says to Dewey Crowe, nose bandaged, ignores how both sets of eyes flit to her chest, "But I don't know your friend."

**X-X-X-X-X**

She shoots out the window, slams Dewey in the face with his own shotgun for calling her a crazy bitch, and snarks, "That may be. But right now, I'm the crazy bitch with a gun pointed at your balls."

Leaves them hand-cuffed to the wheel, parks out back of Ava's house, "You don't have to say anything," then Rayla pushes her gentle out the door, "Go on now, Ava," something wild in her eyes making Ava listen with little protest.

Boyd sits at the table, body angled to face her, gun in hard, grin hard on his face. "Whoa. No shotguns in _this_ dining room."

**X-X-X-X-X**

Rayla sits across from Boyd Crowder, jacket off, hair loose, jaw tight. He's talked about her mama, reminding her of how many times he'd been at her house when they were little, when Lucy was alive, just driving home how that had ended; two people, two guns, time ticking by. She feels cold and hot and fast, faster, because she is, always has been.

Rayla knows how this ends, played this game so many times, with every criminal looking to steal her fast-draw reputation or to disprove it.

"Was there food on the table?" Boyd asks her, gesturing with his fork. Talking about Miami, like this ain't all about them. "Like this?"

"You keep askin' me about Tommy Bucks, Boyd," Rayla states, flat and bold, a burst of spontaneity in an old script, because this is Boyd Crowder, and this is Harlan, and she's the one who got the fuck away from both, and only one of those things has she ever thought twice about. "It's startin' t' make me wonder."

"Well, it makes me wonder too, Rayla," Boyd says, eyes all black, meaner than she recalls. "I presume you must'a had a good reason for shootin' and killin' a man in broad daylight, in threatenin' him like you did, but you ain't seeming mighty eager t' defend yourself."

"Coming from a man who murdered another just two nights ago?" she tosses back, voice bone dry and blood hot, smooth like she ain't mad at all. "I don't owe you any kind of defence." Bites her tongue, sharp sting of pain, just to stop herself adding his name again.

Boyd sighs, glances down at the table, like her words just kill him, and it makes her lip curl angry. "Come on now, Rayla, can't we be civil?" His teeth flash bright, like a strike of lightning in the air, a burst of power. "For old times sake?"

He ain't expecting her to play, she knows, ain't expecting that to mean shit to her, and words spike on her tongue - they ain't _never_ been civil like most folk - but it's just another swipe, a waste of sound, because it won't change anything about what brought them here, won't stop a bullet like maybe the truth could.

(She don't tell stories less they got enough punch to knock somebody down, ain't never not snapped back in some way.)

"I was in Nicaragua, chasin' after a money launderer named Roland Pike," Rayla tells him, makes a gesture like she's conceding, and Boyd's stare burns intense, knows she don't surrender jackshit. "The Miami cartel was after him too, and . . . they got me, shoved me in the back of this car with some guy, took us to this old coconut plantation. I watched Tommy Bucks put a stick of dynamite into that poor man's mouth, tape it shut, and light the fuse. Next time I saw Tommy Bucks was in Miami."

Doesn't tell him about being kicked in the ribs, about her vision turning into an explosion of light, like the death of a whole world, when her skull hit dirt.

"I gave him more warnin' than he gave that man," she continues, blood all cold with threat and mind whirling with adrenaline, none of Miami touches her now. "He chose to ignore it, pulled a gun on me, so I shot him - twice more 'fore he stopped moving. That civil enough for you, Boyd?"

Eyes all over her, Boyd leans forward like falling, slow and hypnotic, no thought at all. "And where do you think that all comes from, Rayla? All that rage, all that hatred, that need to avenge somebody with a bullet?" He talks low, fervent and fierce in his way, words crawling inside of her like bamboo under her fingernails. "That ain't justice the way everybody else sees; that's Harlan in you."

Heat shoots up her spine, sharp and startling like a shock, like ugly truth put in words, but Rayla keeps her stare steady, voice viciously pragmatic. "Don't matter where it come from or why, a bullet in the heart will still leave you dead."

There's a shift in the air, a displacement that doesn't ripple quite the way it should, and ain't that an understatement?

"Is that what this is?" Boyd asks, drawl thicker than blood, eyes like black diamonds and explosives; hard and volatile and hollow. "You gonna kill me for revenge, Rayla?"

"I ain't the one lookin' for revenge, Boyd," Rayla says, no inflection in her voice at all. She breathes steady, seconds ticking by in her head, mirroring so many things that brought her here. "You called this; you can call it off."

Boyd looks at her from across the table, a whole lot of nothing in his face, teetering on the precipice, and she feels it in her bones, nerves burning like wildfire; because she can't (_won't, can't_) back down, only hope he does.

Know he won't.

Not because she hurt him bad, like he hurt her once, because those were just choices and consequences, and his anger's hurting, and hers just _is_, always has been, but there ain't blame; and this ain't because she's Givens and he's Crowder, and their daddies want it so, or because people have been waitin' on this since they were little more than babies.

Ain't because he called it, tying her to Harlan and trying to run her off in the same breath, like this is all just a test, see if she runs again, or because she's put herself in opposition to him, got herself a fast draw and a gun and a star, fuck her last name and bloodline and this whole town.

It's because the script's all shaken up, but the people aren't, and there's so much blood between them, so much hurt and rage and distance and pushing, pulling; wanting each other, backing away, splitting down the middle for twenty years; so the words are different, and she offers the truth, cares enough to _try_, but it's too late, the script's already been written in their choices back when they were seventeen, and really, only one way this was ever gonna end.

Different sides of a room, they look at each other; one with a gold star, one without, and they both _know_, like when he's about to go too far or when murder bleeds hot into her eyes.

"What are you packin'?" Boyd asks, harsh low and manic in the eyes, like he's cornered, ain't liking it one bit.

"You'll pay to find that out," Rayla states, and if that's regret, soft, a little sick in her cool voice, he ain't able to judge.

Boyd makes a face, like he's impressed, like there's any of that hanging in the air like a guillotine. "You got ice cold water running through your veins." One last tribute to years behind them.

Rayla nods, a subtle inclining motion, and says, "Somethin' like that."

Growing up in Harlan was hard, but what she does next is very, very easy: draws her gun out the holster, clears the table, _fires._

**X-X-X-X-X**

For all his many sins, Boyd believes in providence, in things happening for a reason, in things _meaning_ to happen. Given up on God a long time ago, but that ain't the same as not believing, and she knows he does, remembers the sight of him blackened with coal dust like a nightmare, death all over his skin as he chides her for blasphemy, and Boyd was the only piece of Harlan she'd ever wanted to keep.

Boyd Crowder pours everything in a set path cause there ain't no other option, and she's been gone long enough for this path to set like Revelations in his mind, something ugly and awful and destined.

On a set path, Rayla Givens would've kept in Harlan, shot just as many people, rage turning bad like Tommy Bucks, like Arlo who taught her all about the vicious _crack_ of a good hit, anger dulled only by the fuzziness of a concussion - but instead she ran herself out of Harlan, only certainty in bad things and her bullets.

Ain't ever only _one_ way of things.

**X-X-X-X-X**

Her aim holds true, and a bullet impacts the chair, not an inch above Boyd's shoulder, slamming the furniture to the floor loudly, only just failing to drown out a pained grunt. Gun in hand, Rayla swerves around the table, kicking his weapon sharply away and kneeling down beside him. Boyd stares at her, wild round the eyes, and there's something raw in his face that kicks her in the gut, rattles her to the bone, because he _ain't_ that no more than she is.

"You didn't - you didn't do it," he starts, and she turns her head a little to the side, tucks her gun away, hair cool against her cheek.

"Already shot one man today," she says, real simple, removes her eyes from the old blood stain under him, like a glimpse of what might've been. "Figured it'd piss my boss off if I killed another."

Her words roll out easier than truth ever has, and Boyd breathes, keeps looking at her, surprise rapidly twisting into something sharper, far, _far_ too intent for her liking, but then he laughs, a harsh rasp of sound, and his hand's on the back of her neck, and he kisses her hard like a threat, like a declaration, like anger and something bittersweet, all familair, and it's true, she's faster, but she excepts bullets and blood, and it's just instinct that stops her recoiling before he lets her go.

Eyes all sharp and bright and mad, he says, "Welcome back, Rayla Givens."

**X-X-X-X-X**

She tells Art she fired a warning shot, tells him the same line she gave Boyd, tells him that and watches Boyd Crowder grin, a hard flash of teeth, as Tim leads him away cause they both know this ain't any kind of ending - not when she shot first, shot a chair rather than him, and there ain't nothing to build a case on in that.

Tomorrow, Boyd will walk, and Rayla will start hunting him all over again.

**X-X-X-X-X**


End file.
